And who might that somebody else be? Government, says Obama. It built the roads you drive on. It provided the teacher who inspired you. It “created the Internet.” It represents the embodiment of “we’re in this together” social solidarity that, in Obama’s view, is the essential origin of individual and national achievement.

To say all individuals are embedded in and the product of society is banal. Obama rises above banality by means of fallacy: equating society with government, the collectivity with the state. Of course we are shaped by our milieu. But the most formative, most important influence on the individual is not government. It is civil society, those elements of the collectivity that lie outside government: family, neighborhood, church, Rotary club, PTA, the voluntary associations that Tocqueville understood to be the genius of America and source of its energy and freedom.

Moreover, the greatest threat to a robust, autonomous civil society is the ever-growing Leviathan state and those like Obama who see it as the ultimate expression of the collective.

Obama compounds the fallacy by declaring the state to be the font of entrepreneurial success. How so? It created the infrastructure — roads, bridges, schools, Internet — off which we all thrive.

Absurd. We don’t credit the Swiss postal service with the Special Theory of Relativity because it transmitted Einstein’s manuscript to the Annalen der Physik. Everyone drives the roads, goes to school, uses the mails. So did Steve Jobs. Yet only he conceived and built the Mac and the iPad.

Obama’s infrastructure argument is easily refuted by what is essentially a controlled social experiment. Roads and schools are the constant. What’s variable is the energy, enterprise, risk-taking, hard work and genius of the individual. It is therefore precisely those individual characteristics, not the communal utilities, that account for the different outcomes.

The ultimate Obama fallacy, however, is the conceit that belief in the value of infrastructure — and willingness to invest in its creation and maintenance — is what divides liberals from conservatives.

More nonsense. Infrastructure is not a liberal idea, nor is it particularly new. The Via Appia was built 2,300 years ago. The Romans built aqueducts too. And sewers. Since forever, infrastructure has been consensually understood to be a core function of government.

The argument between left and right is about what you do beyond infrastructure. It’s about transfer payments and redistributionist taxation, about geometrically expanding entitlements, about tax breaks and subsidies to induce actions pleasing to central planners. It’s about free contraceptives for privileged students and welfare without work — the latest Obama entitlement-by-decree that would fatally undermine the great bipartisan welfare reform of 1996. It’s about endless government handouts that, ironically, are crowding out necessary spending on, yes, infrastructure.

What divides liberals and conservatives is not roads and bridges but Julia’s world, an Obama campaign creation that may be the most self-revealing parody of liberalism ever conceived. It’s a series of cartoon illustrations in which a fictional Julia is swaddled and subsidized throughout her life by an all-giving government of bottomless pockets and “Queen for a Day” magnanimity. At every stage, the state is there to provide — preschool classes and cut-rate college loans, birth control and maternity care, business loans and retirement. The only time she’s on her own is at her gravesite.

Julia’s world is totally atomized. It contains no friends, no community and, of course, no spouse. Who needs one? She’s married to the provider state.

Or to put it slightly differently, the “Life of Julia” represents the paradigmatic Obama political philosophy: citizen as orphan child. For the conservative, providing for every need is the duty that government owes to actual orphan children. Not to supposedly autonomous adults.

Beyond infrastructure, the conservative sees the proper role of government as providing not European-style universal entitlements but a firm safety net, meaning Julia-like treatment for those who really cannot make it on their own — those too young or too old, too mentally or physically impaired, to provide for themselves.

Limited government so conceived has two indispensable advantages. It avoids inexorable European-style national insolvency. And it avoids breeding debilitating individual dependency. It encourages and celebrates character, independence, energy, hard work as the foundations of a free society and a thriving economy — precisely the virtues Obama discounts and devalues in his accounting of the wealth of nations.

ADVISORY: Users are solely responsible for opinions they post here and for
following agreed-upon rules of civility. Posts and
comments do not reflect the views of this site. Posts and comments are
automatically checked for inappropriate language, but readers might find some
comments offensive or inaccurate. If you believe a comment violates our rules,
click the "Flag as offensive" link below the comment.

So if Obama's statement is correct, where does all of this infrastructure, you know- that is responsible for the success of others- come from? Why from tax reciepts, of course.
According to the CBO's 2008 and 2009 data, 70% of federal taxes were paid by the top 20% of income earners. The remaining 30% of federal taxes were paid by the lower 80% of income earners. Of course, almost half pay little or no federal income taxes. So it would seem that the successful among us pay the lion's share in funding the very infrastructure which is responsible for their success. By the way, this includes providing the livelihoods of government workers. These resources are also made available to all, including those who pay little or no federal income taxes, many times with favorable conditions to select groups.
Obama's ridiculous comment doesnt really say anything about who is responsible for the success of others, rather it says that in a market driven economy, it is largely the success of private enterprise that provides the resources and opportunity for the rest of society.

Obama at campaign event in Roanoke VA 7.13.2012: "If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."

Where in this verbatim quote does Obama say government was the reason you succeeded? He provides some likely contributions to the reason our country is great and people have an opportunity to succeed.

"Beyond infrastructure, the conservative sees the proper role of government as providing .... a firm safety net...for those too young or too old, too mentally or physically impaired, to provide for themselves."

This was the purpose of Social Security which Republicans opposed from its onset. The contributions did and continue to exceed the expenditures. Our legislative representatives chose to provide for the ongoing operations of our government using Social Security funds, rather than adequately taxing those enjoying the benefits from ongoing governmental expenditures

"Limited government has two indispensable advantages. It avoids inexorable European-style national insolvency. And it avoids breeding debilitating individual dependency. It encourages and celebrates character, independence, energy, hard work as the foundations of a free society and a thriving economy"

This sounds great but unforunately it's not true. If it was true, we would not have doubled the national debt during George W. Bush"s tenure in office when regulatory oversight was virtually eliminated and both the government and public lost trillions of dollars. The worst depression in history only was averted by the last minute actions of our Federal Government. Mr. Krauthammer, please identify one example of private industry stepping in and saving the day. What corporate saviors stepped forward to provide the capital to save the day during the credit crunch?

Finally, if you believe a system free of government involvement will improve the quality, cost, and access to health care for the citizens of this nation, just provide some basis for your position. If you want to eliminate Medicare as it currently exists, just say so! If you want to improve it and also contain costs give us your strategy. What do you plan to do with Tri-care and the VA Health Care System? Surely you must be concerned about socialized health care for our veterans and their families.

John Milton (Puritan) stated that each of us was part of a whole-every man's death diminishes me. Are we a Unites America?
Are Republicans the only people who love the U.S.?
My father was a Dem. who loved this country and nearly gave his life for Her. Was he less patriotic than Limbaugh?
Am I anti-American for wanting a government "for the People"?